Monday, 28 April 2014

The Israeli government made clear, Sunday, its decision to freeze construction on 19 Palestinian projects in the West Bank, according to Israeli and Palestinian news sources.

Israel's coordinator of government activities in the occupied territories, Yoav Mordechai, said during a Civil Administration meeting that 19 projects, approved in Area C as a "goodwill gesture" marking the beginning of negotiations with the PLO, would be frozen by the Israeli government, according to the Hebrew newspaper Maariv.

He said that Palestinians had started an "intifada" of illegal construction in the West Bank and, ironically, that it was their "duty to apply the law on everyone including illegal settlement construction in the West Bank."

Israeli authorities quietly "legalized" several outposts in 2012 and, now, some 100 settler outposts stand in the West Bank without government authorization, with more than 500,000 settlers living in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Palestinians are rarely granted permits to build in the region.

The move to freeze the new projects comes as what is perceived as one of several attempts at implementing sanctions on the Palestinian Authority for its recent reconciliation with Hamas. more